If this were a baseball story, the wire service capsule
might be:
"Literacy 2, 6 Book Banners 5, 1.
"ASHEBORO, N.C. -- In the decisive second game of their
administrative double-header, the Randolph County, North Carolina School Board
voted 6 to 1 at a special meeting Wednesday night to reverse a 5-2 vote a week
ago Monday that ordered school librarians to remove all copies of Ralph Ellison’s
acclaimed novel The Invisible Man from their library shelves."
In fact, here's how The Associated Press reported the story:
"ASHEBORO, N.C. -- The Randolph County Board of Education voted Wednesday
to rescind its ban on Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," returning it
to local high school libraries.
The
Courier-Tribune of Asheboro reports the board voted 6-1 at a special
meeting to reverse the ban it issued 10 days ago. The board voted 5-2 on Sept.
16 to pull the book from high school library shelves.
The initial decision came in reaction to a complaint from
the mother of a Randleman High School student who said the book was "too
much for teenagers." The mother specifically objected to the book's
language and sexual content.
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A statement from the American Civil Liberties Union of North
Carolina Legal Foundation applauded the reversal.
"Tonight, the Randolph County Board of Education
righted a wrong. The freedom to read is just as essential to a healthy
democracy as the freedom of speech and all other rights protected by the U.S.
Constitution," foundation legal director Chris Brook said.
"This episode should serve as a valuable reminder to
students, teachers, parents, and school officials across the state of our
ongoing duty to promote academic freedom, ensure the free exchange of ideas and
information, and reject the always looming threat that censorship and
suppression, for any reason, pose to a free society," Brook said.
"Invisible Man" is a first-person narrative by a
black man who considers himself socially invisible. It was originally published
in 1952. The ban sparked local reaction and led to media attention across the
nation.
Before the meeting, Donald Matthews, president of the
Randolph County chapter of the NAACP, released a letter to the county school
board stating that local NAACP members disagree with the book ban. On
Wednesday, a local book store began distributing free copies of the book
contributed by the publisher to county high school students."
Free copies for all county high school students? How cool is
that!!
And, as long as we are looking back, let's take a second
look at the reportedly Al Shabaab-directed terrorist attack on the Westgate
Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. This was a terrible and frightening crime, but already,
the NY Times seems to be taking dictation from American intelligence and
Africanist think tank sources to inflate everything that happened there, and
especially the threat to the United States.
Frankly, this is reminiscent of the panic (and
self-interest) American officials and strategic counter-terrorist thinkers
spread after the attacks on 9/11. Take a look at Barton Gellman’s brilliant
book Angler, on the Vice Presidency of Dick Cheney. It presents a portrait of a
"leader" fleeing to his bunker, virtually peeing down his leg, sure
that 9/12 and the days after would see a series of follow-on attacks by Al
Qaeda.
Actually, 9/11 was both the high-water mark and the
beginning of the end of Al Qaeda as a terrorist threat. The suicidal nature of
the attacks on the World Trace Center, the Pentagon, and probably the White
House, not only cost the terrorist 19 of their most highly-trained,
highly-skilled, cosmopolitan undercover agents, it identified them, and allowed
American and allied intelligence agencies to trace their movements and
contacts, taking off the board still more valuable personnel and networks.
Although Al Qaeda has stayed alive, and has committed more crimes, their
magnitude and impact have been sharply reduced, and their attempts to expand
their range to "the far enemies" of the west have also diminished.
Expect the same for Al Shabaab. the fact that many of the
terrorists have been taken alive, and will be available for questioning, as
well as post-facto investigation, should prove of great value to the
counter-terrorism services of Kenya, the US, and their allies. Further, once
again, the price of striking a dramatic blow has been very high for the Somali
terrorist militia. It has "used up" many, if not most of its
"best people," especially those whose English-language skills allowed
them to penetrate Kenya, and would make them dangerous to the US and other
western countries where English is a common first or second language. The dead and
the captured will now reveal not just identities but "tails,"
connections to other people, places and organizations which are now in great
danger.
As with Al Qaeda and 9/11, Al Shabaab, already largely
driven to hidey-holes in the Somali bush, and already riven with deadly
internal disputes, may never recover from its greatest "victory."
Yesterday's Times report, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/world/africa/kenya-mall-shooting.html?ref=africa&_r=0
went to absurd lengths to magnify the terrorists' achievements.
They were able to sneak across the Somali-Kenya border. This
is something Somali peasants having been doing every day for years. Yes, as the
Times noted, corruption of poorly-paid, virtually untrained Kenyan border
guards adds to the problem, but basically, this is a long border, and can be penetrated
without paying off officials.
They were able to gain "inside help" at the Mall,
and this allowed them to smuggle in, large, devastating belt-fed machine guns.
The ability to pay off a mall employee, even a Mall security employee to get
big boxes surreptitiously brought in, while it has horrible effects, is, again,
hardly a major feat of sophisticated planning and execution.
Once the terrorists were in place (and given the damage to
the Mall structure, it will likely take weeks to fully search for corpses,
terrorists and their victims, and get a count on how many attackers were
involved) they proved very hard to overcome. As I said in my last blast, people
who have no compunctions about killing will kill many before they are stopped.
That they we so heavily armed is sobering, but should not be surprising. Again,
to repeat myself, our wicked world is full of weapons, heavy and light, and is
also oversupplied with rich benefactors who will buy weapons and help get them
to religious or ideological killers. No surprises there.
It is the nature of crime and punishment that particular
crimes will take authorities by surprise, even if they have been both watching
and planning for such events for years. Very few crimes are prevented, except
in the wake of prior crimes. The post 9/11 investigations did allow US and
allied intelligence agencies to prevent some planned follow-on attacks. The
post Westgate Mall investigations are likely to do the same.
Especially since they will be led by agencies which have
long been operating, and gathering valuable, even if not pre-emptive
intelligence on Al Shabaab, notwithstanding strains in US-Kenyan relations over
our policy of "distancing" from the indicted Kenyan President Uhuru
Kenyatta.
Today's Times piece from Kenya, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/world/africa/us-sees-direct-threat-in-attack-at-kenya-mall.html?ref=africa,
in addition to hyping the Al Shabaab "threat" to the US -- at least
no one is calling it "the homeland" -- is bursting with arguments for
the necessity of the US to swallow its principles against credibly-accused
mass-murderers and to embrace the political leader who is also, somehow, the
country's biggest private land-owner.
Why?
He needs us more than we need him, and President Kenyatta's
hurt pride has been no bar to ongoing American law enforcement, intelligence
and military operations.
It may help some guy at a Nairobi think tank to suck up to
Mr. Kenyatta, but it is help we almost certainly do not need.
None of this seems to have occurred to the folks at
"the world's greatest newspaper."
As to the idea that any of the Al Shabaab-indoctrinated
Somali-Americans might be using their passports to return home with mayhem on
their agendas, umm, Timesfolk, this does not seem to me a believable scenario.
Even if they use some other passports (duh), US borders are
harder to penetrate than Kenya's, and smuggling or buying guns here -- while
appallingly easy for too many people -- are not likely to be Kenya-easy tasks
for Somali-Americans. And by the way, the best reason for that is not
anti-Black racism among gun-sellers, but the high level of patriotism among
Somali-Americans, who like other immigrant groups, stand ready to rat out
people from their community ready to destroy the country they love, and the
much-improved lives they have created here.
Are Al Shabaab and terrorism real threats? Of course they
are, but panicky threat-inflation, by government officials, "experts"
or journalists is unhelpful and flat ridiculous.
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